GRUMPY OLD MURDERERS /// These four Georgia suspects certainly aren't the first aging white men accused of wanting to bring down the government, but the expected profile is getting more expansive and inclusive.

I live in the suburbs of Atlanta, and every Thursday, I receive, without my asking, a weekly suburban newspaper. It shows up in a plastic bag at the end of my driveway, as it shows up in a plastic bag at the end of every driveway in my neighborhood. The paper, called the East Cobb Neighbor, is harmless enough: There are front-page pictures of pumpkins around Halloween, and front-page pictures of Santa around Christmas. Occasionally, it runs stories about millage rates and schoolboard elections. Most of the time, the only question I ever have about it is whether or not to take it out of the bag before it goes into the bin for recycling.

A few weeks ago, however, I opened it, and had my eyes opened in return. On Page 4A, in the part of the paper normally devoted to a column of consumer advice — indeed, under the rubric "TrustDale™Home to the Intenational Consumer™" — blazed a headline seemingly lifted from one of Tom Paine's pamphlets: "The tyranny of government." And from there a consumer advocate by the name of Dale Cardwell launched into an attack not on lawnmowers that won't start or margarine that doesn't really taste just like butter but on a government that "is getting bolder and bolder about violating our rights."

I live in the suburbs of Atlanta, so I hear this kind of thing all the time. I hear it from people I call friends, and I hear it from people I barely know at birthday parties. What Mr. Cardwell wrote, however, wasn't just the kind of anti-government diatribe that passes for philosophy in these parts. It was... well, let's allow Mr. Cardwell to state his case, as he did forthrightly in his very first paragraph:

"I support the Second Amendment. That might seem like a strange subject for your consumer investigator, so allow me to explain."

And explain he does. It seems that recently "your consumer investigator" saw a government vehicle parked illegally. It did not get a ticket — a clear case of the government abusing its power.

Your consumer investigator was also frustrated driving through Gwinnett County, a suburban enclave north of Atlanta where a recently instituted express toll lane goes largely unused. What would happen, your consumer investigator wonders, if he drove in the toll lane without paying a toll? What would happen if masses of people did the same? He would be arrested and so would they, because "if you or I chose to intentionally break the law, we would certainly be held accountable." The same, however, cannot be said of everybody, because "the federal government has decided it's not really important to enforce our immigration laws," and therefore people who drive in an express lane without paying a toll live in fear of arrest while people who cross the border without bothering to become citizens can send their kids to American schools.

What can the average citizen do for redress of these terrible abuses? Well, Cardwell says, you could hire a lawyer and petition for grievance, but then you'd have to be willing to wait five or ten years before your case is heard. "Why? Because the government controls the speed of the courts, and has access to the bottomless pocket of taxpayer funds in order to fight you."

This is why your consumer investigator supports the right to bear arms. "I'm in no way advocating a violent response to government oppression. It hasn't gotten to that point, but I'm sure glad they know — we know — we still have the Second Amendment." End of column, over and out.

I have kept the column on my desk since then. At first I kept it because I couldn't believe it — because it inadvertently functioned as a brilliant parody of the kind of "slippery-slope" reasoning, both insane and inane, whereby the government's penchant for imposing high-speed toll lanes can only be kept in check by the threat of armed insurrection. Then I kept it because it served as a primer to the quality of thought on display in the Republican presidential debates, where all the candidates for the highest office in the land accept without question the notion that the government is the enemy, and so seem to be campaigning for the job of enemy-in-chief. I had already become familiar with the outrages conjured obsessively by the likes of Perry, Bachmann, Paul, Santorum, Gingrich, and Cain — the anchor babies, the innocent 'tweens inoculated for genital warts, and above all the billionaires burdened by the prospect of paying taxes — and I held onto Mr. Cardwell's column in anticipation of high-speed toll lanes joining the list.

Late last week, though, came another reason for keeping Mr. Cardwell's column around: the allegations that a terrorist plot had been hatched by four old duffers in the habit of having breakfast together at a Toccoa GA Waffle House. "Your young men will see visions and your old men will dream dreams," goes the Bible verse, and what these old men apparently dreamed of was not just shooting and blowing up government buildings but turning bean plants into a toxic compound called ricin, then spraying the ricin on highways near big cities and killing a lot of people. Over their cheese eggs and their Scattered-and-Smothered potatoes, they dreamed, in other words, of mass murder.

There are a few ways to look at the plotters, if they are in fact guilty of plotting. The first is how the law is looking at them: as a group embittered and disaffected men who were already loosely associated with the "militia movement"; who had come under the sway of the writings of fellow Southerner and former Minuteman named Mike Vanderboegh; and who had just enough experience and expertise to act on the inspiration provided by a Vanderboegh "novel" of heroic anti-government bloodletting accomplished in the name of patriotism. They already had a lot of guns and an illegal silencer and reportedly they were seeking explosives; they had already obtained the books and documents that offer instructions on how to turn castor beans into ricin and were looking to find a source for the beans themselves. The informant whose testimony is central to the government's case said that they spoke of being willing to die for their cause, though they were apparently uncertain about just what their cause was: attacking the government, or just killing as many people as possible in the hope of igniting anti-government rebellion.

Of course, the second way to look at the accused is how their families and their lawyers look at them, which goes something like this: C'mon — bean plants? The government is going to throw a bunch of retirees in jail for seeking to grow bean plants and talking 'bout revolution? These were men who over years worked, in various ways, for the federal government — one for the Department of Agriculture; one for the Navy, in a 30-year-stint; one, as some kind of maintenance contractor to the CDC — and they all, in the words of one of the wives, "love this country." They were, according to their lawyers, "a bunch of grumpy old men," "frustrated" and "blowing off steam," but in all other respects "friendly" and "neighborly", guilty of nothing but the exercise of their First Amendment rights and perhaps a pathetic vainglory. Indeed, the front-page headline on of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution the day after prosecutors went public with their allegations underscored the apparent unlikeliness of the plot and its plotters: "4 accused by feds don't fit the profile."

The paper may just as well have gotten it over with and said they weren't Muslims. By indulging in a bit of profiling itself, the Journal-Constitution not only ignored the fact that the men in question do fit a certain kind of profile to the letter — they certainly aren't the first unluckily aging white men accused of wanting to bring down the government — but also missed the larger implications of the story. What matters is not that the men fit or didn't fit a certain kind of profile; what matters is that the profile keeps becoming more expansive and more inclusive. What matters is not that they followed an ex-Minuteman who blogs and writes right-wing fantasies in Alabama; what matters is that the ex-Minuteman also occasionally provides commentary on Fox News, and that his line of reasoning — that he's not calling for bloodshed in his writings but simply warning of what might happen — is, disconcertingly, the same line of reasoning of the consumer investigator who writes a column for a weekly suburban newspaper that features pictures of pumpkins on Halloween and Santa Claus on Christmas.

I live in the suburbs of Atlanta, and I can tell you that the kind of rhetoric that mistakes everyday annoyances for eternal infamies — that offers a well-armed militia as the answer to a misguided toll lane — is the non-point source pollution of the Republican South: It's in the water, and now it's turned up at the end of my driveway on Thursday afternoons. But as our redoubtable Charles Pierce pointed out in this essay a few months ago, the mainstreaming of extremist rhetoric does not make extremist rhetoric more mainstream; it just makes the mainstream more extremist. It makes the ongoing radicalization of white people not just a rural story but more and more a suburban one, and it makes it entirely possible to look at the alleged Waffle House plotters as both their families and their federal antagonists see them: as a bunch of friendly, neighborly codgers who were harmless but dreamed of harm, and loved their country so much they wanted to see large numbers of their countrymen dead.